The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,580

corner.” The parades would be starting any day now.

Michael took a walk around the garden. All the dead tropical plants had been cleared away, but the new banana trees were already springing up from the dark freeze-killed stumps, and even the gardenias were coming back, dropping their shriveled brown leaves and breaking out in dark glossy new foliage. The bony white crepe myrtle trees were still bare, but that was to be expected. All along the front fence the camellias were covered with dark red blossoms. And the tulip magnolias had only just dropped their great saucerlike blooms; the flagstones were littered with their large pink petals.

The house itself was shining clean and in perfect order.

Aunt Vivian had taken the bedroom which had belonged to Carlotta, and Eugenia was still at the very far end of the second floor, near the kitchen stairway. Aaron slept in the second bedroom in the front, the room that had once belonged to Millie Dear.

Michael did not want to return to the front room, and they had readied the old northside master bedroom for him. It was quite inviting—even with the high-backed wooden bed in which Deirdre had died, now heaped with white down comforters and pillows. He liked in particular the small northside front porch on which he could go out and sit at the iron table and look out over the corner.

For days there was a procession of visitors. Bea came with Lily, and then Cecilia and Clancy and Pierce, and Randall came by with Ryan who had various papers to be signed, and others dropped in, whose names he had trouble remembering. Sometimes he talked to them; sometimes he didn’t. Aaron was very good at taking care of things for him. Aunt Vivian was very proficient at receiving people as well.

But he could see how deeply the cousins were troubled. They were chastened, restrained, and above all, bewildered. They were uneasy in the house, even at times a little jumpy.

Not so Michael. The house was empty, and clean as far as he was concerned. And he knew every little repair that had been done; every shade of paint that had been used; every bit of restored plaster or woodwork. It was his greatest accomplishment, right up to the new copper gutters, and down to the heart pine floors he’d stripped and stained himself. He felt just fine here.

“I’m glad to see you’re not wearing those awful gloves anymore,” Beatrice said. It was Sunday, and the second time she had come, and they were sitting in the bedroom.

“No, I don’t need them now,” said Michael. “It’s the strangest thing, but after the accident in the pool, my hands went back to normal.”

“You don’t see things anymore?”

“No,” he said. “Maybe I never used the power right. Maybe I didn’t use it in time. And so it was taken away from me.”

“Sounds like a blessing,” said Bea, trying to conceal her confusion.

“Doesn’t matter now,” said Michael.

Aaron saw Beatrice to the door. Only by chance did Michael wander past the head of the steps, and happen to hear her saying to Aaron, “He looks ten years older.” Bea was crying, actually. She was begging Aaron to tell her how this tragedy had come about. “I could believe it,” she said, “that this house is cursed. It’s full of evil. They should never have planned to live in this house. We should have stopped them. You should make him get away from here.”

Michael went back into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

When he looked into the mirror of Deirdre’s old dresser, he decided that Bea was right. He did look older. He hadn’t noticed the gray hair at his temples. There was a little sparkle of gray mixed in with all the rest too. And he had perhaps a few more lines in his face than he’d had before. Maybe even a lot of them. Especially around his eyes.

Suddenly he smiled. He hadn’t even noticed what he put on this afternoon. Now he saw that it was a dark satin smoking jacket, with velvet lapels, which Bea had sent to him at the hospital. Aunt Viv had laid it out for him. Imagine, Michael Curry, the Irish Channel boy, wearing a thing like that, he thought. It ought to belong to Maxim de Winter at Manderley. He gave a melancholy smile at his image, with one eyebrow raised. And the gray at his temples making him look, what? Distinguished.

“Eh bien, Monsieur,” he said, striving